Chapter 44 Perfect Little Accident

Meredith felt better the next morning. Derek's warm body next to hers made her feel like she was safe. Derek had been home late last night, so she decided to let him sleep and head straight to the hospital instead. She continued her OB/Gyn rotation today and needed to do pre rounds on most patients before Addison got there. Preparation was essential to being a good surgeon and to avoiding C sections and monitoring the progression of natural births.

"Congratulations, Meredith" Dr. Webber smiled when Meredith walked into him at the hall.
"What do you mean?" Meredith wondered. There wasn't anything she could think of that would warrant a congratulation.
"The board offered Derek the job. He's going to be the next Chief of surgery." Richard told her.
"He hasn't told me anything." Meredith admitted.
"Oh, I thought you would have planned something special for tonight. It's a good occasion to celebrate. "Richard continued.
"I'm on call tonight. So there's not going to be much celebrating. Babies don't stick to daylight hours to be born, so I'm probably going to be busy." Meredith said regretful "How are things going with Adele?"
Richard smiled "Great, I enjoy spending time with her. It's going to be great to finally be able to go on holidays with her and to leave the hospital before midnight."
"I'd like to know what that is like myself." Meredith laughed.

"Have you talked to your sister?" Richard wondered.
"No, she's off today and I haven't seen her since, well, Thatcher told me not to go to the funeral." Meredith told him.
"I'm worried about him. Normal people don't show up drunk for their wife's funeral. It's easy to lose yourself. I drank a lot after your mother left." Richard stated quietly.
"My mother has this effect on people." Meredith smirked.
"Anyway, it's easy to drown your liver in liquor. One of you should look out for him. "
"You are asking the daughter he hit to look out for him? My sister might be the better option here. I had only just decided to give him a chance to get to know me, but after this my shrink is going to be happy about the extra appointments I need." Meredith laughed.
"Anyway, Meredith, I have a bad feeling about this. You and Lexie should look out for him." Dr. Webber reminded her "He really needs someone. It's devastating to lose the love of your life.
"Do you think he's an alcoholic? I mean it could be grief. I drank a lot after mom died." Meredith tried to bargain.
"I don't know Meredith. I knew Thatcher for a very long time. I've never seen him like this. You don't go to a funeral drunk. When your mother left Seattle, I started to drink and I didn't stop until it was almost too late. Adele got me out of it, she made me go to meetings, she forced me to go to rehab. I've been sober ever since. You should look after him. He needs support right now."
"I don't think I can do that, you heard what he told me." Meredith told him and turned around.
"Two drinks less and he would have told you that you are the daughter he dreamt of having." Richard said louder as she walked away.
"I doubt it. I… I have to go back to work." Meredith apologized and went to the OB/Gyn wing. "I don't want to talk about this. It' none of your business! Just because you broke off my parent's marriage doesn't mean you can walk into my personal life and interrogate me about this. Back off! Don't interfere in this again!"


The rounds didn't go as Meredith had expected them to go. When she smelled a patient's perfume she got nauseous and turned around to puke in a bin.
"Dr. Grey, are you alright?" Addison wondered after she had finished to examine the patient.
"Yes, it's just a bug." Meredith tried to reassure herself, but Addison had seen enough symptoms to jump to a different conclusion.
"Ginger ale helps me. I can give you one of my bottles if you want." Addison offered as little advice.
"I'm not, hold on, are you? I can't be. But you are." Meredith started to ramble. Her thoughts were way fast than her tongue.
"Dr. Grey, you are very emotional, you started crying in the NICU for no good reason a few days ago, you experienced frequent nausea throughout the last few days and as an OB/GYN I'm inclined to assume that you are pregnant. I'm around pregnant women a lot." Addison summarized her observations. The realization hit her like a bus. She had been an emotional mess for a while now. She had thought it was because of the confrontation with her father, Susan's death and her fight with Cristina, but the nausea added on top of the emotionality could mean that she hadn't just caught a bug.
"I'm not, hold on, crap, I might actually be." Meredith stuttered. It was a likely possibility. She thought about the last time she had used tampons, but she couldn't remember. It had been too long ago. She was. She was pregnant.
"Want a bottle?" Addison offered and showed her a bottle of ginger ale in her lab coat pocket.
"Yes, please." Meredith accepted and opened the bottle carefully.
"Let me get you into an exam room. Do you want me to page Derek?" Addison asked her.
"No, it's fine. I mean you find out who's going to be Chief today, he's busy enough." Meredith answered.

"You are about five maybe six weeks along. Congratulations. The baby looks fine." Addison told Meredith after checking the ultrasound. "I'm going to give you a prescription for prenatal vitamins and tell Cathy to schedule another appointment in six to seven weeks."
"Carolyn was right. I'm pregnant." Meredith breathed out.
"Derek's mom knew before you did?" Addison laughed.
"Yes" Meredith nodded.
"I'm not surprised. It freaked Nancy out, she still doesn't know how her mom is doing it. Her mom knew before her the first time she was pregnant. Nancy called me after her mom had told her and asked me whether I thought it was possible and if she should do a pregnancy test. It was really funny. She freaked out." Addison told her with a sympathetic look on her face.
"I wouldn't have thought that she is be someone who is freaked out by something like this." Meredith was really surprised.
"That's because you've only seen her lying on a bed and assumed that she was sleeping with your husband. You didn't get much of a chance to talk to her." Addison laughed.
"You know about this?" Meredith asked with an embarrassed look on her face.
"Grey, I hate to break it to you, but everyone knows about it. " Addison said truthfully. "and Nancy gave me a quite detailed report about what happened at the trailer."
"I figured." Meredith nodded.
"Are you okay? I mean, you are a resident and I'm just going to assume it wasn't planned." Addison wondered.
"I'm fine and yeah, I'm quite surprised. But it's fine. I think, I'll have to talk to Derek about it." Meredith babbled looking at Addison "Please don't tell anyone."
"You know I can't. But I have to ask you to do the same." Addison told her ex husband's wife. "It's funny Grey. A year ago Derek and I were in the middle of our divorce and now we are both going to be parents. It's kind of funny how life works."
"I was screwing boys like whores on tequila a year ago and it's pretty much what got me into this mess in the first place." Meredith laughed.

"Karev, you have to cover for Grey tonight. She has a fever and needs to rest tonight." Addison ordered when she spotted Alex in the hall.
"Alright." Alex nodded without further questioning.
"You can't lie to Alex" Meredith whispered to Addison.
"I can, I'm an attending and as your OB/Gyn I tell you to have a good night sleep after all the stress of these past few days." Addison replied. "How's the morning sickness, Dr. Grey?"
"The meds are starting to help. I haven't puked since I took them about 30 minutes ago." Meredith laughed.
"Good. So how is the father going to react, you are going to tell him, right?" Addison continued to interrogate her which made her uncomfortable.
"I will." She tried to brush it off. She did not want to discuss her unplanned pregnancy with her husband's pregnant ex wife.
"It's kind of weird, he never wanted to have kids with me and now we are both going to be parents." Addison said thinking out loud.
Meredith did not know how to respond to this. Why had he told her that he wanted to have all those things when he never wanted them with Addison?
"Anyway, I have an interesting case for you today. Here's the chart, you've seen the patient, research the procedure, go to the skills lab. I want you to scrub in with me." Addison told her, handed over the chart and walked away.


Meredith sat in the skills lab with a jello belly model practicing how to insert the tubes into a pregnant woman's belly laparoscopically. She was concentrated on her work when she heard somebody coming in. "How's my wife?" Derek asked with a smile on his face and a bottle of ginger ale in his hand.
"Fine. But you don't have to check on me. I'm not a patient." Meredith dismissed his advances and tried to focus on the jello in front of her. She wasn't ready to tell him.
"But I want to ensure that you get the best care possible. Addison told me to bring this to you. Are you alright?" he said in his typical charming voice. Did Addison tell him, she wondered.
"Why don't you go and take care of your patients?" she smiled.
"My wife is blowing me off" he said pretending to be disappointed.
"The resident is insisting that the attending is doing his work" Meredith told him as she tried to move an instrument through the tube she had just inserted.
"The resident has no right to do so" Derek reminded her.
"Well, in that case it's the wife telling her husband to go back to work" Meredith told him and looked at the door. She was not ready to tell him yet.
"You're bossy, I like it" Derek said leaving the room. "I love you"


"Why is Shepherd bringing you fruit and a bottle of ginger ale?" Cristina asked when she entered the room 20 seconds later.
"Because my husband is nuts." Meredith smirked and wondered what Addison had told him.
"I knew that way before you did. So what are you up to there anyway? Why are you poking through jelly with a tube?" Cristina wondered.
"Neonatal surgery with Dr. Montgomery." Meredith explained. "We are going to fix the babies heart defect while he is still in his mother's womb"
"Alright, you seemed to be getting a lot of interesting surgeries on that rotation." Cristina noted. It was true, but she had been on OB/Gyn rotation and those were the procedures Dr. Montgomery performed during that time.
"What are you trying to suggest?" Meredith wondered.
"Well, she seems to like you or she's feeling guilty or you know something about her that nobody else does."
"You are going to find out soon enough. Maybe it's because I'm an incredibly capable resident. You never know" Meredith smiled and got back to work on the model.
"Anyway, I have heart valve to fix" Cristina excused herself and left the room.